Improving Writing by Improving Grammar

Teaching grammar in a way that can be measured has been a difficult task. Every grammarian has a way that they feel is beneficial to students. This unit seeks to find the best way to engage students with grammar and syntax and to produce proof that students understand and have the ability to manipulate what they have learned to display their knowledge of the structures of the English language. With this unit, students will be asked to learn different ways of creating sentences. They will be asked to manipulate sentence structure so that the text they are writing will be assessable and appropriate for different audiences. For example, the theme of the unit they will be writing about is “man’s inhumanity towards man”. The culminating activities, writing for audiences of different reading levels using what they’ve learned about sentence structure and grammar conventions, will show that they understand and can manipulate words and structures that elementary students can comprehend as well as adult readers using the same topic.